Tools that rock: GrabBox

I am devoting some time to write a series on the tools and apps that I use daily. These highlight the aspects that make certain apps super useful for getting stuff done and doing it “wicked fast”. Often when I am cranking on a project there is no chance to talk through the tools that are making my day to day more productive. Through reviewing a few weeks worth of projects, I will be sharing how I integrate these tools in my setup.

Grabbox – Simple screenshot sharing for Mac

http://grabbox.devsoft.no/

Instant sharing of your screen – that is the essence of Grabbox: It does one simple task and it does it so well.

When I am working with a colleague or reviewing comps with a client, I need the ability to share portions of my screen in real time while typing on instant message clients like Skype or iChat. For me, it’s been a bungle to configure screen sharing since I cannot guarantee that the other person has the right equipment or software to review what we are working on.

The beauty of GrabBox is that is takes a few tasks and combines it into a lighting fast 1 second action.

When you take a screen shot of your display, a particular window, or a selection, GrabBox takes the image which by default lands on your desktop and throws it into a screenshot folder in your Dropbox public directory. In addition, it adds a bit.ly-fied link to your clipboard so you can paste a link to your contact instantly.

A side by side comparison:

Old school way ⌘ +⇧+ 4 Take image and place in on public website via FTP Copy URL of the image from the browser Convert the image URL into a bit.ly link for metrics Paste the link into email or instant message

The new GrabBox way ⌘ +⇧+ 4 Paste the link into email or instant message

Looking through the steps above, GrabBox streamlines the process of rapid screen sharing. It’s a simple script and it just rocks.

From an archival perspective, all your screenshots are stored in one folder named “Screenshots” which makes it SO convenient to retrieve a clip that you shared. Also whats really useful is that you can delete an image or replace a certain image. This is more of the outlier use case but think of when you send someone a link to you screenshot and it is shared (which you can see thanks to bit.ly’s metrics!) – all you need to do is delete the file from you Dropbox.

For the Windows people among you, I have heard that http://tinygrab.com/ is a comparable script for Windows users.

Few tips (and a word to the wise):

If you want to use this tool – go ahead and get yourself a free Dropbox account here: http://db.tt/B7yycHX

By default, GrabBox makes incremental filenames such as 1.png, 2,png, etc. Definitely want to change that so links are always unique and your contact doesn’t try to change the url paths to find other images that were not intended for that audience.

Basically just look at my preference pane and adjust your settings:

 

All I can say is one time I sent my boss a url and it unfortunately was the wrong screenshot — “smooth move, Ex-Lax“. The “Random filename” URLs takes care of this, which returns files names like 87d8.png.

Beyond these basics, I think you’ll find this to be an awesome time saver and super straightforward tool.

NOTE:
If you are already a hardcore GrabBox user – help Jørgen P. Tjernø out and support his development efforts! http://pledgie.com/campaigns/13553

Tags: dropbox, grabbox, productivity, tools, tools-that-rock